FBI and European partners seize major malware network in blow to global cybercrime::U.S. officials say the FBI and its partners in Europe infiltrated and seized control of a major malware network that was used for more than 15 years to commit a gamut of online crimes including crippling ransomware attacks.
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LOS ANGELES (AP) — U.S. officials said Tuesday that the FBI and its European partners infiltrated and seized control of a major global malware network used for more than 15 years to commit a gamut of online crimes including crippling ransomware attacks.
Qakbot’s ransomware victims included an Illinois-based engineering firm, financial services organizations in Alabama and Kansas, along with a Maryland defense manufacturer and a Southern California food distribution company, Estrada said.
Officials estimated the so-called malware loader, a digital Swiss knife for cybercrooks also known as Pinkslipbot and Qbot, was leveraged to cause hundreds of millions of dollars in damage since first appearing in 2008 as an information-stealing bank trojan.
They could then deploy additional payloads including ransomware, steal sensitive information or gather intelligence on victims to facilitate financial fraud and crimes such as tech support and romance scams.
Beginning Friday in an operation officials dubbed “Duck Hunt,” the FBI along with Europol and law enforcement and justice partners in France, the United Kingdom, Germany, the Netherlands, Romania and Latvia seized more than 50 Qakbot servers and identified more than 700,000 infected computers, more than 200,000 of them in the U.S. — effectively cutting off criminals from their quarry.
A senior FBI official, briefing reporters on condition he not be further identified, called that number “fluid” and cautioned that other malware may have remained on machines liberated from Qakbot.
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